Turkish August foreign visitor arrivals surge 46 percent - ministry

ANKARA, Sept 29 (Reuters) - The number of foreign visitors arriving in Turkey jumped 46.35 percent in August to 4.66 million, data from Turkey’s Tourism Ministry showed on Friday.

The rise was fractionally lower than in July, when there was the biggest increase since May 2004. This followed a turnaround in tourism numbers in April, when the number of foreign visitors rose for the first time in nearly two years.

The number of Russian visitors to Turkey leapt 671 percent in August from a year earlier, the data showed.

Tourism, which adds about $30 billion to gross domestic product each year, was hit by an attempted coup last July and a spate of bombings blamed on Islamic State and Kurdish militants, which scared away tourists over the past year. (Reporting by Ercan Gurses and Nevzat Devranoglu; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Ece Toksabay)